Thank you very much and thank you everybody for joining us today. So yeah, as, as introduced, we're gonna be talking about puppy advice for, owners today and the role that we can play in the veterinary clinic in terms of making sure that owners go away with the best advice possible. So to begin with, they're gonna go through the importance of early life stages and why this early life period is so essential for puppy owners.

Talking about what. Is appropriate socialisation and habituation for puppies. As I say, the role that the veterinary clinic plays in that process, but we're also going to be doing a little bit of troubleshooting for common behaviour questions you might get.

So as vets, I'm sure all of you are, overly familiar with seeing a puppy for its vaccinations or seeing a dog after it gets a little bit older. You'll do what you need to do in terms of the health of the puppy, and then you'll get fired of behaviour questions. Which is potentially going to be something that's gonna take slightly longer than a couple of minutes to answer.

But, you know, owners do really look to their vets for this behaviour advice, so making sure that we can give them bits of information to go away with that they can put into place to see an improvement is really useful. So we're gonna do some troubleshooting there, and we're also gonna talk about where we can send these puppies after their visit to the vet, to make sure that they're getting all the help that they need. OK.

Lovely. So, we'll dive straight in with a bit of puppy development. So you'll see on your screen now, I've listed the main kind of developmental stages in puppies.

Now, the bits of to do with the development stages, I'm gonna be discussing with you. Most of this evidence is slightly dated, so there's a lot of evidence from the, 1960s, 1970s that's at these developmental periods and puppies. A lot of it comes out of Scott and Fuller.

So I put a couple of key references for you down. If you wanted to get a bit more information. The first reference is from a book, The Domestic Dog, by Circle and Jago, and there's a nice chapter in there that summarises early experience in the development of behaviour.

Scott and Fuller's, Review of their research that they did, which was published in 2012 and is open access, is also a really key reference to go and just get yourself familiar with the work that they did and the implications that that has, for our practise. And in your notes pages, you'll see a couple of other references I put down for you if you wanted to see a bit more of this evidence that I'm gonna be talking about today. So let's go through these periods one at a time.

The first period is the prenatal, and that's when the, that's before the puppy's born, so whilst the foetus is still developing, there's quite good evidence from other species that mothers that are stressed produce offspring that are also more susceptible to stress. So the first kind of information that we need, really need to make sure that we're safeguarded and information for breeders. So if somebody comes in planning to breed from their dog or they've got a pregnant dog, we really need to be making sure that they're aware of.

The care that needs to be taken not only with that dog's health and diet, but also with their behaviour, because if they are particularly stressed, we're almost presetting their offspring to be quite susceptible to stress as well. It's sort of that, from an evolutionary perspective, is quite adaptive because it makes sense that if your mom is stressed and you're in a dangerous situation, when you grow up and develop, you're likely to still be in quite a dangerous world, so it makes sense for you to be more reactive. In terms of diet and health, there's evidence that if dams aren't getting enough, of a proper diet, or they're lacking things like fatty acids, that can influence not only the physical development of the puppies, but also their behavioural development.

So again, really important to get those messages into breeders that the first thing they need to do is really look after mum. And also just along the same lines, genetic influences on behaviour can be really profound as well. So if somebody is thinking of breeding from the dog, making sure that, you know, that dog is a, a dog that has a sound temperament to be bred from, so they're sound, both from a health perspective but also from a behavioural perspective.

OK. So our puppy's now been born, and in the period up until, about, that should be 0 to 2 days, not weeks, sorry, a typo there. So the neonatal period, which is up to a couple of days, is when they're developing senses quite quickly.

So during that period they're gonna be capable. Of, sorry, it's weeks, not days. I'm getting myself confused.

They're gonna be capable of touch, taste, and possibly smell. During that time, the mother stays very close to the litter. And the behaviours that you'll see are kind of reflexes that are based around the puppy seeking warmth and milk.

So they're gonna be wanting to stay close to their mother, and they're going to be wanting to suckle as well. So despite the fact that they don't really seem to be doing much else at that time, and they haven't got the ability to hear things yet and they haven't got the ability to see things yet, gentle handling as early as, 3 days, which is where I got the days from, does appear to increase the rate of their development, so their physical development. But also how confident they are when they're then tested later on in life.

So there is good evidence for very gently, gentle handling of puppies at this early stage, with the proviso that the mother is happy with that, because obviously if she's not, then we're likely to cause more issues and then we are to to benefit the puppies. So the period that follows on from the neonatal period is the transitionary period, and that occurs from about 2 to 3 weeks of age. That's a time of really rapid development.

So the ears and the eyes start to open, the teeth start to erupt, the puppies start to be able to get up onto their legs. They can now start to move or crawl backwards as well as forwards. They're starting to be able to toilet by themselves and take solid food.

And we're also seeing the beginnings of social behaviours develop. So these puppies are now, showing that they're able to play with one another. They're starting to growl both in play, and when they're faced with a threat or when they're frustrated.

And we're seeing other behaviours occur like tail wagging, which, is more likely to be when the puppies are showing affiliative behaviours. OK, so that takes us up to the socialisation period. Now, technically, the socialisation period occurs between about 3 to 7 weeks of age.

And that's slightly earlier than we often refer to it to owners, or kind of to one another. And the reason for that is that this period between 3 to 7 weeks is basically when the puppies are forming social relationships. So they're starting to form relationships with their litter mates.

But they're also forming relationships across species. So this is a time when puppies can make relationships with people, and other animals. So if there's a cat around the puppy may start to form a relationship with whatever animals are around it.

And dogs are quite unique in the way that they can form social relationships across species very readily. So it's really important at that early stage that puppies are having access to people, and they're kind of experiencing things that we want them to be happy with later on in life. Now technically, the juvenile period picks us up from 7 weeks and goes all the way to sexual maturity, which may be around 6 months, depending on the the breed and the size of the dog.

But I put a little proviso in there, which is that between 7 to 14 weeks. We're still thinking of that time as being particularly important for the puppy. And we'll often say that the socialisation period is up to 14 weeks, because that's a particularly important time where we really need to be thinking about the experiences that these puppies have and how they help set them up for life.

Now, there is some evidence that around 8 weeks, puppies are possibly starting to be a bit hypersensitive. And by that I mean that they're showing greater fear responses to things. And we need to consider what the implications for that may be in terms of rehoming, which usually happens at around 8 weeks, but also in terms of their back.

Sees happening around that time. So there's some evidence that if a, a dog has a particularly negative experience during that time, that they find that quite difficult to overcome. And it's not necessarily means that we need to change the way that we do things, but we just need to understand that it may have an influence on how the puppy's learning.

And there's also evidence that by about 14 weeks of age, puppies start to become less flexible. So going back to those experiments where they handled puppies early on in life, like I say, those puppies that were handled before 3 days seem to be more confident later on. And that'll continue throughout the socialisation.

Period. But if you take a puppy and you don't handle it until it's about 14 weeks of age, that puppy's a lot more worried about handling, and actually, it takes them a lot longer to accept that than they would earlier on in life. So we kind of see that their anxiety about new things increases the older that they get.

And as I say, juvenile period technically ending with sexual maturity, but we know that social maturity in dogs happens later on, . And these times get more approximate as the puppies age. So we've got the, transitionary period and the socialisation period that are fairly set, depending on breed.

But obviously, as we get older than that, puppies develop at different stages. So we've got different, effects that can be coming in due to the size or its breed. OK, so just a bit of a summary as to why that period is so important.

Dogs are what we call an altricial species, which basically means that their brain is still developing very rapidly after birth. And the experiences that they have will shape the development of their neurology. So it will shape the development of their brain.

And we can think of this in terms of the puppy's expectations for life for essentially getting set. So the puppy's learning about what's important to it and its environment is attention from people important is, are they in quite a barren environment where the only thing of importance is, beams of light which they learn to pay a lot of attention to. Are there toys in the environment that they're learning are important?

Is it interactions with their litter mates? So there's expectations in terms of the important things that life has are set. But also they're learning about what's normal and what's part of everyday life, and we need to make sure that we're really.

Encouraging owners and breeders to capitalise on that. We know that young puppies are more likely to accept new experiences, so we can really make the most of that when they're young. But as they become older, they're more likely to be scared of things that they haven't come across in those 1st 3 months or so.

That's not to say that they won't learn that new things after that time are fine, but it's just that we've got a period of time where they're more receptive to learning that. And as I say, those stages do depend on the size and the breed of the dog. 8 weeks of age is typical free homing and vital, which means that vital socialisation, so that socialisation period, technically up to 7 weeks, is all the responsibility of the breeder.

So again, in terms of advice for puppy owners, we can give them lots of great advice, but great advice also needs to be provided to puppy breeders in terms of what they can be doing with puppies, what, in the time that they're in their care to best set them up for life. And in terms of how important it is to give them enrichment and give them access to different experiences so that they're safeguarded against developing fears later on. So puppy owners are really continuing on this foundation that should already be there in terms of the breeder preparing the puppy for life.

OK. So a few more points from that. We know that dams is the right amount of complete diet and to be in good physical and psychological health.

Young puppies need regular gentle handling and enriching in the early environment, and the enrichment is really important because, as I say, puppies that are, are reared in quite a barren environment, Don't develop in the same way as puppies that have quite an enriched early environment, so they're potentially going to be less confident about things. But it may also make them more likely to develop issues such as repetitive behaviours. So, like I say, those puppies that only have access to beams of light, do they become very, very focused on beams of light?

And are they the puppies that grow up more likely to develop abnormal behaviours relating to chasing beams of light? And which is something that we can see. OK, so from about 3 weeks we need to be starting positive and controlled exposure to the things that we want puppies to be happy with as adults, and we'll talk a little bit more about how we can practically put that into place.

OK. OK. Sorry.

Slight technical issue there. All right, so let's come on from talking about the importance of the early learning period to discussing the role of learning and how that shapes the behaviour of the puppy as it grows up into an adult dog. So the way that I usually explain this to owners is that dogs are constantly learning about what's good and what's bad in their life, and how can they predict or retain or avoid those things.

And that kind of relates to classical conditioning, which is the association part. So I'm, I'm learning what's associated with good and with bad things, and operant conditioning, which is learning. How can I monitor my behaviour in order to get these.

And with that framework in mind, we can understand why dogs behave the way that they do and what we can do to help change behaviour using reward based. All right. So there's a couple of forms of non-associative learning that occur as well, and the first of that is habituation.

And habituation is basically what we're aiming to achieve with these puppies. So it's a gradual decrease in response to a presentation of a low level or a regular stimulus. It's basically the process of getting a puppy familiar with something.

And this is done with repeated low level exposure, that's done quite frequently, and a puppy just learns that this thing is nothing to worry about. It's just run of the mill, it's something that happens quite regularly. It's of no particular importance, so I don't need to be worried by it.

On the flip side of that coin, we've got sensitization, which is a gradual increase in response to a presentation of a high level or an irregularly applied stimulus, or one that's applied when the animal's already in a high state of arousal. It basically means that the puppy becomes more worried by something every time they experience it. That's more likely to happen if the experience is quite intense or it causes pain or discomfort, especially the first time.

If the experience is irregular, so it only happens every once in a while. If the puppy is already feeling worried or excited or frustrated when it's exposed to something, or if the first time the puppy sees it, it's already scared, so it's already showing a bad response to it. So how can we tell whether a puppy's gonna habituate or whether it's going to sensitise?

This depends on the intensity of the stimuli, so if it's a loud noise, it's more likely to make the puppy sensitise. How important the stimuli is. So if it's something that causes pain, for example, the dog's obviously gonna be more likely to sensitise to that.

The level of arousal, so like I said, the dog's already worried, it's already excited, it's already frustrated, it's more likely to sensitise something than if it was in a calm state. And how regularly that's applied. And the underlying personality of the dog is also quite an important factor from my experience.

So if you have a dog that is naturally more anxious versus one that's naturally more laid back, those anxious individuals are more likely to sensitise, . But the important thing is really identifying whether a puppy is sensitising or whether it's habituating. So my rule of thumb is usually that if the puppies experience something 3 times and it doesn't seem to be improving or it seems to be getting worse, then we need to stop and change the way that we're approaching it.

It's normal for puppies to potentially be a bit apprehensive about new experiences, but we don't want to see them absolutely terrified. So again, if the first time they see something, they're really scared. We need to stop and address the way that we're dealing with it.

And the way that we do need to deal with it has to be through a gradual reintroduction, rather than being made to face their fear or and what we might term flooding, which we'll talk about a bit more. OK, so how can we tell if dogs are worried? As a social species, dogs are very, very good at communicating their emotional state.

And we need to be able to pick up on the signs that they use to tell us what that is. So common signs of fear may be things like the, the dog or the puppy retreat. Using what we would call appeasement behaviours to diffuse social threats, which might include things like punching and cowering, rolling over in a tense way to expose their belly, and generally making themselves look a little bit pathetic, and those signs that dogs will show in order to diffuse a social threat.

The other option they have may be to retreat or to hide, so get away from the thing that's scaring you. Another option that dogs have, maybe to use aggression and to, face that threat in a more proactive way. That's usually a last resort.

So with puppies, we would expect them to try using appeasement or using avoidance before they tried aggression, but aggression can be a very effective way of avoiding things that scare you. So, if it, if they've learned that that's effective, they're more likely to choose to do it again in the future. I think for puppy owners, things to pick up on would be that quiet puppy who doesn't really want to engage.

It could be that they're just quiet, but if they're like that every day and they don't really seem to be improving, then actually, are they quite worried? And then there's obviously the signs of stress that we could pick out, which may include things like yawning, licking their lips, and those kind of displacement behaviours which may be shown when the dog's worried. And they're kind of out of context.

So the dog that suddenly sniffs the floor or scratches itself, out of context, and is that a bit of displacement because the dog's worried. So it is important that we can educate owners on recognising signs of fear. And I think having handouts available in clinics that just demonstrate some of the more common signs is a really useful way of helping owners understand that.

OK, so I've got my puppy, and he's shown that he's worried about things. We've, we've introduced him a few times and he still seems fairly worried. So how do we build confidence?

The best way to do that is to do it gradually and at the puppy's place. We need to give them choice and then reward them as a consequence of being brave. I think this is an area where owners can get confused about the right course of action to take, because a lot of owners are aware of the socialisation period, and they see it as a real window of opportunity to expose their dog to absolutely everything that they need to meet later on in life, regardless of whether they're worried about it or not.

And I think that's a slight misinterpretation of what the socialisation period represents. We know that the key really is that the dog's introduce the things in a way that it finds, non-threatening. So if we get to take a puppy during its socialisation period and introduce it to lots of new things, and that puppy's scared by everything, we're actually making them more likely to be worried later on rather than helping them.

So in that case, it's much better to slow things down and say, OK, we're not going to introduce you to everything new during this couple of weeks, we're just going to introduce you to a few new things and give you enrichment and encourage you to be a bit more brave. If the puppy's useful, we need to reduce the intensity of that stimulus that that they're not scared and associate it with something nice, and usually we use food or play and gradually build it back up. The most common example to that would be using distance, so a puppy that's scared by traffic.

You might take it to a green where there's a road, but you can put yourself slightly back from the road. You get so far away from the road that the puppy's not worried by the traffic, and you play a game with a puppy or you'd give it some treats and you'd gradually get closer to the road at the rate the puppy could cope with. The real important point here is never to remove the option to avoid.

So as we talked about earlier, avoidance is a strategy that dogs will do when they're scared. We want to make sure they can always get away so that they never feel like they have to use aggression. If we remove the option to avoid, then we're almost encouraging the dog to try something else.

And so we do need to make it really clear to owners that if your owners, if your dog's chosen to avoid a situation, that that's respected and we help them get away. OK. So this is often the conflict that you'll come up against.

My puppy's not fully vaccinated yet. They do still need socialisation and obviously disease risks vary depending on the area that you're working in. But there's several things that we could do, with the puppy that don't involve exposing it to potential disease risk but do help with socialisation.

So we're gonna talk a bit more about what we could put in place at the vets to help puppies cope with . Socialisation, but just advice like, take the puppy out with you, but put it on your lap, sit near to quiet rose with a puppy on your lap. Carry them if they're too big, consider a case or a pram if they're happy with that.

Meeting fully vaccinated polite dogs at home, it is really important that they get interaction with other dogs early on so that they can learn how to behave sociably with them. Issues that relate to other dogs are probably one of the most common things that I get asked about, so making sure that puppies are well socialised at a young age is really important. They can be introducing the puppy to different sounds, and those are downloadable from our website.

There's a sound sociable CD that you can download from the Dogs Trust that includes things like children playing, farmyard animals, fireworks, all the different things that you want puppies to be happy with. But also just bringing new things into the home, meeting different people in the home, doing different enriching things in the home, making sure that puppy is exposed to at least one new thing every day in a, in an appropriate way. But they don't have to be exposed to everything, the key is that there's a variety, and it's always positive.

OK, so now we've talked a little bit about the importance of the early development stages and what we can do to ensure appropriate socialisation and habituation. We're gonna come to talk about what the role of the veterinary practises and all that. So what can we do as vets to improve the experience of puppies that come in to see us, but what can we also do to better educate owners in terms of the advice that we're giving them to go home with?

The first thing we can do when puppies are coming in is making sure that we're managing our waiting rooms, and I think this is a really key point, not only for puppies, but also for other animals that are coming in. Like we said earlier, dogs are much more likely to sensitise if they're already stressed to begin with. So anything we can do to try and reduce stress before they come into our consulting room is good.

And just as simple as considering the layout in your practise. So, are there, is there any form of barrier that you can use if you need a visual, visual barrier? Ones that work quite well might be chairs with solid backs, just so that you can have some kind of barrier, or blankets that you can put over the back of chairs so that there's, some kind of barried off area.

Considering where your exit your entry is and where the desk is, considering where other animals are, so having a cat friendly practise with, a separate area for cats or cat carriers up high can really help all of the animals. But really key for me is the role of your reception staff. They're the ones that are sitting, observing.

Potentially talking to the owners whilst they wait for a visit. And they should really be encouraged to help manage a waiting room. So if there's dogs that aren't coping, or you're seeing, they're seeing owners struggling with their dogs, getting involved and suggesting that either if the dog's reactive, maybe it waits outside and they'll call the dog in when there's time, or else kind of just giving them a bit of advice for how to manage things in the meantime is really important.

And the aim is to keep things as calm as possible. OK, so the visit, the puppy's coming in for his first visit. We've managed the waiting room.

Now, the ideal scenario is on that puppy's very first visit, nothing painful happens. So they're not getting their vaccination, that's the ideal. However, puppies obviously will all have had their vaccination when the breed of.

First bring them in, and the breeders quite unlikely to want to bring the litter of puppies in just for a social visit before then. And they may do, but it's not, not quite so likely. But really, it's best if we can have nothing painful happen.

If we do need to vaccinate the dogs, we try and make up for that by giving them lots of treats. The treats should be high value, so something like a bit of dried schmacko probably isn't going to cut it. If you can have, if you've got a fridge and keeping some primula at your practise, so it's squeezy cheese that comes out of a tube can be really handy, but generally keeping some higher value treats back when you need them can be quite a good idea.

And the other key is taking the time to introduce yourself, so allowing the puppy to approach you, spend some time getting to know the puppy whilst ask the owner questions before you launch straight in with a health check or with a vaccination, just to try and make it positive. And then if you do have time after they have that negative experience, do a few positive things afterwards to end on a good note. OK.

So in terms of handling, we've got the opportunity to prevent problems before they develop when the dogs are this age, and that can be done through not only our handling techniques, but probably most importantly the advice that we're giving owners to to go home with. So the advice really should be to take it slowly and to educate owners on appropriate handling and recognising the anxiety. And you can do that when you're handling the puppies yourself, so you can be, say, in explaining what you're doing and also explaining signs of anxiety if the puppy does look worried, so that the owner's better prepared to pick up on those.

So the idea is to do things at the dog's pace and if there's signs of resistance just to slow down. Looking for signs of fear. And if you see them giving some more space and time, if possible, really the key here is using the mini minimum level of restraint that's required in order to safely get your job done.

And also considering your advice in terms of specific breeds and specific needs. So do you have a spaniel with long straggly hair around their ears? Is it gonna be a good idea to get that dog used to having their ears handled and groomed from an early age so that we can do the maintenance that we need on them as they get bigger?

OK, so I've got a video to share with you . Now I believe that the sound on this video isn't gonna work for you, so I'm gonna talk over it as we watch it. So this is, me with my dog.

At the time I took this video, I'd only had him for about 3 months, 2 months. And I was starting to do some handling training just to get him used to it, because he was a dog that was quite sensitive about handling when I first got him and also got quite frustrated easily if he felt he was being restrained. So all I've started to do is sit and stroke him where I know he's happy with it.

I'm just stroking him when I'm looking out for signs of anxiety. You can see he's doing a couple of yawns and he's looking at me. The key, the key thing that I use is a, a quick break to see whether the dog's gonna re-initiate contact with me.

So in a second, you'll see that I give him a bit of a break and I see whether he wants to nuzzle me and continue contact. What I've started to do now is do a bit of handling, and I've got some just low value biscuits in my pocket. I'm giving him a nice stroke, and then I'm touching his ear.

I'm following that up with the word yes, and then I'm giving him a treat. It's important that the treat comes after the handling, so I'm not overshadowing what I'm doing, and I can keep an eye on how he's feeling and make sure he's still happy. So as we're going through this process, I would start to handle him, in a slightly more formal way.

And what I've also done is put it on a cue. So when I'm about to handle him in a way that's not just stroking, I'll say, let me see, and he knows that means that he can predict. I'm gonna do something a bit unusual, but it's not gonna be painful when I'm gonna give him a treat afterwards.

With puppies, this process can be accelerated slightly, cos obviously I've only had him at 2 months here and he's got a couple of issues that I've noticed already. If he was a little puppy, I would have progressed faster. You can see there I've had a pause to see whether he'll reinitiate with me.

I think in a second, I'm gonna demonstrate that he has got a bit worried about something and you'll see a few signs of anxiety. What I would say as well is, obviously this is my dog, and I'm very familiar with him. By this point, I know what his issues are.

I wouldn't be doing this with an older dog, at quite the same level. I wouldn't have my face that close to his face, for sure, unless he was my own dog and I knew him quite well, because obviously I'm in a bit of a risky position there. But with puppies, we've got the, We've got the kind of good situation of actually.

You know, we know that they're less likely to use an aggressive response if they get worried at that point. And it's slightly safer. If you've got an older dog when you're doing that same process, and they do have existing issues, it's always better to have them muzzled whilst you're doing that kind of training with them just in case they get pushed too far, and they react.

OK, so we're gonna move on to talking about. What else can we do within the centre to provide for these puppies and their owners? So you've got a few different options, you can do what some people would term a puppy socialisation visit, and exactly what those visits look like vary depending, depending on the centre and depending on what you're offering, but they tend to be owners bringing their puppies in either for appointments, or for.

Kind of Just whenever into the waiting room is a bit of a free for all, for specific appointments to get them used to things or as groups just to pop in and pop out. So there are benefits to this, so if it's a positive experience of a vet, we're really building up that bank of positives to try and prevent the dogs from developing issues. A nice way of building a relationship and, and building that, trust with your clients.

And there's also potentially gonna be sales benefits if they're popping in, they're more likely to buy your products as well. Potential costs may be that if it's not a nice experience, they're going away having learned something negative. But for me, one of the other costs is, is actually having the time to manage this and interact with the puppy and the owners.

So if you're saying to puppy owners, feel free to just pop in whenever. Are you gonna be able to accommodate them when they do pop in? So are you gonna have the time to answer questions that they have?

Are you gonna have the time to make sure that they're not in the waiting room with another dog aggressive dog and that we can manage that? So, you know, do the cost sometimes outweigh the benefits, possibly? Things to consider would be the knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm of the staff, especially if you're doing drop-ins, your reception staff, who'll be kind of the front house people that are speaking with the puppy owners in the waiting room.

The layout of your waiting room, so is there somewhere appropriate that they can be, the time, costs that that's gonna be to your centre, and also the kind of schedule that you're thinking. So, is it gonna be a free for all? Are you gonna suggest they come in at quiet times like lunchtime?

Are you going to do appointments? Are you gonna charge people for coming and doing appointments? And is that something that like people are likely to take you up on?

So those are all questions that relate to is this suitable for your specific clinic, and whether that's a yes or a no really varies depending on the setup you have. OK, so your other option is to have what we might call a puppy party. These are basically just classes where you people bring their puppies in, they do a bit of socialisation, a bit of seeing new things, they maybe interact with other puppies.

You're providing behaviour advice and you're potentially doing some basic training as well. I think puppy parties are a really fantastic way of building a positive association with a clinic, building a relationship with clients. It's scheduled, so you know how much time.

You're committing to it every week, and you, which makes it easier to manage. And it's also giving people the skills that they need to increase the puppy's confidence, but also start to teach them to manage feelings of frustration as well. The key again is that puppy parties need to be carefully managed.

So we're gonna go over kind of my advice for the perfect puppy parties. Essentially, the take home message is, if you feel like it's not possible to put many of these things in place, sometimes it's better not to do something than to do it and cause a negative, reaction in the dog. So it is really thinking about is it suitable for your clinic?

And then when you do have puppies coming, is it suitable for that specific puppy, and what can we do if not? OK, so what's the ideal setup of a puppy party? A safe, clean environment where each puppy has its own space to retreat to if needed.

That's not to say that each puppy needs its own kennel or its own den, but each person should be set up, for example, it could just be a chair that each person has, and people appreciate that if a puppy retreats to the chair or it retreats to its owner, it's given its space at that point, so it's able to do that. I would suggest that. In a large space, you have no more than 6 puppies because it can become quite difficult to manage with any number greater than that.

Between 8 to 16 weeks so that you haven't got larger puppies, bullying the smaller puppies. And ideally that there's a minimum of 2 staff to be around to help with those. I'd suggest 1 hour of allotted time the whole time.

So that includes your setup and your tidy away. So the puppy party might be about 40 minutes, and then you set up and your tidy away may take 20 minutes in total with answering a few questions. A 4 week course is generally quite well advised, just to provide.

A bit of ongoing contact and build those positive experiences. I wouldn't suggest doing this as a one-off because of my experience, the first time a puppy does a puppy party, they may be a little bit worried about it. Like we said, each time they should be habituating to it.

So each time they come, they should be getting more and more confident. If they're not, then we need to readdress what what we're doing with that puppy. But the first time they're more likely to be feeling a bit more sensitive, feeling a bit more anxious.

So I would recommend that if you're gonna do these, it's at least twice to make sure that they are able to habituate, ideally at least 3 times. OK, so what should we discuss? Health advice, absolutely, and services that are available at your clinic.

Other things to cover in terms of behaviour would be understanding what your dog's telling you. So really highlighting body language of puppies, picking up when a puppy is worried, picking up when a puppy's frustrated, and giving owners advice about what they can do in regards to that. How to successfully and appropriately socialise puppies with a focus on allowing puppies choice and rewarding brave behaviour.

Troubleshooting common behaviour problems should be in there as well. And what should you practically do? So basic reward-based training, sit, recall, loose lead walking is what puppy owners want.

Gentle handling of puppies to make this a positive experience at the vet. So like in the video I showed you, encouraging owners to be doing that with their own puppies. So handling their puppies, following them up with a treat, noticing if their puppy has any sensitive areas, guiding them on how to introduce grooming or nail trimming to their puppies in a way that is gonna be positive.

At my puppy classes, I usually talked about introducing muzzles as well. Just as a fun activity to do, but also explaining that if there was ever a situation in the future where the dog's potentially going to be in pain and it may need to wear a muzzle, it's already going to be happy with that, so it's not going to be distressed by the introduction of a muzzle. It's also useful to have some quiet time between exercises so that you can do the discussion part.

And I would always provide handouts of tips to go home with as well. All right, so we're gonna come onto the troubleshooting aspect of our talk now. So like I said, puppies are a lot of fun, but anybody that's ever owned a puppy previously is probably gonna agree with me that they are hard work.

So they're doing lots of behaviours that are related to investigating their environment. They're doing lots of natural behaviours that we find annoying, like chewing things up. I haven't learned what's expected of them yet, so they're just trying everything.

And common issues that people may ask you about would be mouthing people, chewing things, stealing items like the TV remote or shoes, house training, learning to be left alone, socialising with other dogs, jumping up, recall, loosely walking, and how to manage their puppy with their children. OK. So the take home point here is that advice is specific to the individual and the issue, but we can give some generic advice that can be applied to most situations.

So in that context where you've done your eight minute consult and then somebody right at the end has said, oh, my puppy's mouthing me, and it really hurts. And you don't have the time to go through and ask them more information and really get to the nitty gritty of it. You can give them a few take home messages which are likely to help in any case, and that's the same, for many questions that you might get asked in terms of behaviour problems.

The first thing that we want to do is avoid the trigger for the unwanted behaviour wherever possible. So where we can avoid that trigger. Avoid punishment-based trading methods, and that would be anything that's the intention is to inhibit the behaviour and through reverse the techniques.

So shouting at the puppy, telling the puppy off, anything negative that's added to reduce the likelihood of that behaviour occurring again, we want to avoid, because that can create conflict in the dog and it can also be quite detrimental for the relationship. What we do want to do is reward an alternative, so we want to teach the dog what we do want them to do rather than telling them what we don't want them to do. We need to make sure that that dog's got sufficient physical and mental stimulation, so making sure that their needs are well cared for in terms of the amount of stimulation that they're getting is really important.

But if they feel like they really need help, then absolutely ask for specialist help and knowing where to refer those people if they are having issues that need more time, and a more in-depth discussion around them. Another really important point that I would like to stress is ruling out medical influences, and that can be. That can have a really profound influence on behaviour.

Now there's some research that suggests up to kind of 70% of aggressive cases that we see actually have a medical component involved, the dog's in some form of pain and discomfort, which is making aggression more likely. And so certainly where the dog's showing aggression, we absolutely want to rule out medical influences as much as possible. But also if there's been a sudden change in the behaviour.

If the owner's describing the dog as a real Jekyll and Hyde, it's really unpredictable, can't tell when it's going to have an off day. Any issues around handling obviously throws up that we need to check that there's no pain in that specific area that the dog's sensitive to. Noise fears, interestingly, dogs that have noise fears have been shown to be more likely to be suffering from something causing pain, which is making them more sensitive to sounds.

But also dogs that are really lethargic and don't seem to be very motivated by anything. OK. All right, so what we're gonna do now is take a couple of examples and just troubleshoot through them together.

So there's gonna be a couple of multiple choice questions coming up. The first one is gonna be on the next slide. So this is one issue that you're gonna be asked a lot about, it's learning to be left alone.

And that's because dogs are a social species and puppies are naturally scared of being alone. It's something that their genetic makeup tells them is dangerous. They should be in a group.

OK. So night time separation, so you're gonna see in front of you a few statements of advice to give. Right, folks, so we're gonna do a quick poll on this.

So, read through those and then simply, it's an anonymous thing, so don't be scared. Read through all the Options and then simply click on the answer that you feel best represents your belief. And we'll give you about a minute or so to go through that.

So I know it's read fast but don't be shy. Take your stance, take a guess. It is all anonymous, so nobody will know.

And then Suzanne will discuss all the outcomes when we are done. While you are reading through all of that, if I can just highlight to those of you that have been having some sound problems, we are aware of them. It's all related to the storm alley that's hitting the UK at the moment.

So not everybody is getting them, but for those of you that are having the waxing and waning sounds, we do apologise. There really isn't much that we can do about it. It does seem to be settling down a little bit as the storm is passing, but, apologies for that.

Right, so we're gonna give you another 10 or seconds or so to to answer this question and then we will end the poll and I will reveal it all for you, Suzanne. Brilliant, thank you. Let's poll results.

Can you see on your screen? Yes, I do. Thank you.

Yeah. So, and we've got about 50% of people selecting the, the last option, which is sleeping in a puppy until he's settling at night and during the process, ignoring him if he vocalises. So we're gonna go through this now.

So yes, so I would agree with you. The last, option there is the one that I would have selected myself. Now there's different options and the.

The classic advice that people would have given, and the advice that, you know, I followed with my pup, the first puppy that we got was separate the puppy. I separated him completely and ignored the vocalising completely and I persevered. And yes, my puppy did learn to be left alone at night.

But there were a few nights of crying, which was quite distressing for me, quite distressing for the puppy. But yes, it, it did work. So that is an option that people may try and it's an option that may work.

The first option, which was settle the puppy in a crate in the bedroom, if he cries, say no firmly and then ignore him. That option, it may be better for the puppy to be in the crate in the bedroom, so that part, is gonna be potentially the better option than that second one that I suggested to you. But saying no firmly to the puppy isn't likely to help things because that is a form of punishment, even though it's not hitting the dog, it's something negative that we're adding to try and decrease the likelihood of the behaviour.

The other aspect in terms of this issue is that the dog is trying to seek social contact. So any response that we give him may, influence his behaviour, and some puppies will learn that even if you say no, it's better than nothing. So it isn't something that we would recommend that people, put in place with the puppies.

Let the puppy sleep in the bedroom if he cries, can't for him. I wouldn't suggest that either, because we don't want to reward the crying behaviour. But I think sometimes, you know, this is, this is advice that I see quite a lot.

So I think sometimes we come so far away from avoiding. Kind of punishment based techniques that sometimes we almost kind of want to go the other way and and reward things that we don't want and I wouldn't suggest that we, comfort puppies, if they are barking and crying, I would suggest that we persevere and try and ignore that where we can. So the most appropriate option I would have picked out of those would be to sleep near the puppy, and that may be that the puppy's in the crate in the bedroom, or it may be that the person prefers to be on the sofa in the living room where they want the puppy to be, wherever the preference is, but be near to the puppy until he's settling a bit better, and that might just be the first, couple of nights.

During that process, if the puppy vocalises, the ideal is to ignore him. Some people can't ignore a puppy at nighttime because of neighbour issues. In those instances, I'd normally say to people it's the same advice that I took when I, I got my current dogs.

I went to my neighbours before I got my dog and said. Look, I'm gonna be getting a dog for the next couple of months. It may be quite noisy, but I'm working on it.

So please don't feel like just because I'm not responding to it, I'm not working on it. If it hasn't improved within that time period, I'll change what I'm doing, but please bear with me, and I can only apologise that it may be a bit noisy for you for the next month. And sure enough, the first month's quite noisy, and then if you can really persevere, it it does work and you can get there.

But you do need neighbours that are slightly, understanding. Where people aren't able to ignore their puppy, I would recommend that they respond to them sooner rather than later. So if they're gonna say to you, I really have to not ignore my puppy, he's gonna cry for half an hour and I just can't ignore him for that long.

It's better that they go to him earlier rather than teach him to persevere, which will all is what will happen if they wait for half an hour and then respond to the puppy. So if they really do need to respond to it sooner rather than later, but ideally don't give reinforcement for that behaviour. OK.

OK, so really just a little discussion of that. It's normal for puppies to be worried about sleeping alone. An ideal situation is often if you've got another dog in the home, puppies will settle quite well with the other dog, and they don't need to be with you at all.

But where that isn't possible, consider sleeping near to the puppy for the first couple of nights to get him used to it before separating. Be aware that any response is likely to reinforce the behaviour. And if they're struggling to cope, sometimes it could be quite a good advice to use a crate or something similar in the bedroom.

You can gradually move that crate out a little by little each night until they're out of the bedroom with the door shut, and then they can go down to the living room or the kitchen or wherever they want the puppy to be. And that's a process that can work quite well as well. OK, so looking at leaving puppy alone during the day, the ideal is to get the puppy used to brief periods of separation from the very start.

So a lot of owners will fall into the, kind of trick, if you like, of taking a week or two off work, staying with the puppy, and then suddenly they're alone. But we know that we need to be separate rating the puppy for short periods regularly right from the start. And gates or pens are massively useful because they allow the puppy to see you and get used to there being a physical barrier between you.

So ideally we're gonna start with short periods of time in view of the owner when the puppy's sleepy, leaving them with a safe chew or a stuff to that they can enjoy and we're gradually increasing the distance and the time that they spend alone. If the puppy reacts badly, they should wait before they go in. That's because we don't want to reward the behaviour.

So if the puppy cries and they think, oh, I've been gone for too long, the puppy really should stop crying before they go back in. Next time you could try a shorter period of separation. Things like leaving the radio on can help, making sure that they feel comfortable and that they're safe.

But if the puppy's showing a severe reaction or if it's not improving, so if they seem to be, sensitising, if they're just not habituating to it, then best to refer to a behaviourist early on. I have seen some cases where the puppy's responded really badly to being separated early on and actually just hasn't ever got used to it. And then I'll see.

Then maybe a year or two down the line, and it's still a significant issue. So I do think there's those cases where puppies are just seem to be naturally a lot more worried about being left. And where that happens, people do tend to need help earlier rather than later.

All right, so we're gonna come on to our next multi-choice question now, which is related to mouthing. Right, folks, you know what to do. Simply click on the answer that best suits what you feel is right.

And we'll give you about a minute or so to, to choose the option that best suits you. Don't be shy. It is anonymous.

So nobody will know what you answered except you and then you can gauge yourself against what Susanna discusses for us afterwards. Suzanne, I think they're getting more used to it. They're coming in thick and fast now.

A bit slow on the first one. OK Right, let's end that poll and share those results quickly. There you go.

OK, brilliant. So we've got 49% of people say move away from the puppy quietly, don't interact again until the puppy's calm. And quite a high percentage as well, so 26% saying offering the puppy a toy instead.

And we've got yelping and moving away, there is the third most popular. Nobody's saying no firmly, and a couple of people saying the strap with treats were put into a timeout and it's crate. OK, lovely.

So, yeah, I would agree with the majority there. So, the best advice that we would give in that situation would be, moving away quietly and no interaction again until the puppy's calm. However, there are kind of provisos to this, so mouthing can be a really, really tricky behaviour, and there may be times where we would offer the puppy a Toy instead.

Ideally, we'd want to do that before, the puppy has really started mouthing. So when the puppy's active, giving him a toy to redirect that behaviour onto is gonna be the best thing we can do. We definitely don't want to distract the puppy with treats because we would accidentally reward the behaviour.

Putting puppy into a timeout in his crate. It is a bit similar to the option that we've selected as the right one, but the difference is that you're not physically getting the puppy and placing them into the crate, which could be seen as quite a negative thing. And what we're doing instead is moving ourselves away from the puppy and waiting until they're calm.

If the puppy's been really bad, we may move away and shut a door between ourselves and the puppy and leave them isolated until they've calmed down. But yeah, we want to avoid saying no so that the puppy stops mouthing, yelping in a high-pitched voice and moving away, I think works for some puppies, but for others, they may become quite excited by that, especially dogs like terriers, like high pitched squeaky noises can be something that's quite exciting. So, generally the safest generic advice is to just remove attention until the puppies calmed down, and then when they have calmed down and engaged them with something more appropriate like a toy.

OK. All right. So part of the reason that we don't want to punish these behaviours is that they are completely normal.

There's something that, that dogs need to do, and they've got quite a lot to learn about. So we need to be calm and consistent in the way that we approach it. Puppies will be teething between about 3 to 7 months, and they'll relieve that discomfort by chewing.

We want to teach them that they can chew on things, but things ought to be their own. But we do also need to consider whether there's another motivation for this behaviour. So, is the puppy simply Mouthing because it's teething?

Is it mouthing because it wants to interact socially in a friendly way? Or actually, is this puppy really overexcited? Or is it feeling really frustrated about something?

So is there an expectation that that isn't being met and the puppy's reacting out of frustration? Is it in response to fear? So, you know, is this mouthing or is it potentially the puppy showing aggression?

And we do need to consider all those options. I've got a video to show you in a minute to highlight some of that as well. OK, so in terms of some generic advice we can give, absolutely puppy proofing, so prevention is always better than cure.

Puppy owners need to be able to puppy proof their house, and gates again are always the one of the best ways of doing this. So clearing things up, don't leave things out that you don't want to get chewed. And providing a good range of toys and chews of the puppy's own, and when he chooses to use them, make sure that you reward that.

Prepare for puppy witching hour, the times that puppy's more active, get in there first and give them opportunities to do the right thing, rather than getting themselves into trouble doing the wrong thing. And make sure that we're managing the puppy's environment to set them up for success, and that's really the key. So we're not reprimanding the puppy for making mistakes.

But if they are chewing something and we can't ignore them, we may want to make some kind of distractions. So usually with puppies, if you walk out of the room, they'll stop doing it. And once they've stopped you can interest them in something else.

And yeah, making sure that when they do put teeth on people, the interaction stops. Really encouraging people to engage their dogs in the right type of play, so tuggy games are absolutely fine for people to play with their dogs. The dog isn't gonna learn something negative about the relationship between them and the owner.

It's a good outlet for those kind of. Bragging, biting behaviours. So it could be a really valuable way of engaging a dog.

But also, if done correctly, teaching a game of tug will teach the dog frustration management as well. So they'll learn to release a toy when they're asked to. They'll learn to take a toy when asked to, and they'll learn how to pray appropriately.

Suitable toys. So if it's a puppy that's likely to shred and swallow things, soft toys may not be suitable, but there may be other things that you can give them like rubber toys or, shoes that are gonna last longer. Brain games that keep them active, using food as enrichment.

So instead of just putting the food in the bowl for the puppies, even something as simple as getting the biscuits and scattering them in the garden. It's gonna use a bit of that physical and mental energy up, so it can be really useful way of easily getting the puppy doing something better. And getting quite creative, making sure that people aren't encouraging their puppy at other times, so consistency is really important here.

If people like having a rough and tumble game with puppies sometimes and don't mind it mouthing, but at other times get angry with a puppy, that's gonna cause a lot of conflict and potential issues. So we need to make sure that we're reducing that risk. OK, so you should have sound for this one.

This is a video of my dog, and I'll explain it after you've seen it. OK, so this video was taken in the midst of our DIY and it was actually about the exact same time as that first video I showed you, so about 2 months after I, adopted my dog. You'll see in that video that he's quite frustrated.

The reason he's frustrated is because we were playing with a tug toy and, he wanted to play on the carpet and not the slippy kitchen floor. And we can tell he's frustrated because of the range of vocalisations, but the reason that I put this in here is I alluded earlier to understanding the motivation behind the behaviour. I might respond differently to my dog behaving in this way than I would if I thought he was just trying to play with me and be friendly.

And I may not want to stand around and try and ignore him at this point. I may want to remove myself from the situation quite quickly. But I also want to teach him that he, he can play with toys with me, but it, it's in the way that's appropriate, and that wasn't appropriate.

So I'm making sure that I'm removing my attention at that time. I'm also putting this in here because sometimes people will come with you, come to you with an issue with their puppy mouthing, and it will sound very simple, and you'll give them some advice and they'll go away and they'll say it's not helping. Sometimes if they show you a video, you'll go, oh, that's a bit more serious than I'd considered.

And frustration is one of those emotions that can cause mouthing and can actually, then. Move on to to aggression as well. So if we've got any concerns, it is important to get these dogs referred to a specialist, but really make sure that we're keeping people safe as well and, and not giving them advice such as stand there and keep ignoring it, if we think that that dog's likely to escalate its response.

OK. We've got our 3rd and final multiple choice question coming up now. Right, folks, by now you're experts, you know what to do.

Give us a click and let's see what you come up with as what your feelings are for the correct answer. Lovely. And just to give context to this one actually, it's slightly different from the others.

So there's a few statements here and I just want you to select the the true statement. Right. Another 10 seconds folks, and then we're going to end this poll.

We have a clear leader starting to take the the race here. So Right, let's end that poll and share those results for you. There you go.

OK, lovely. So yeah, we've got in the lead there, puppies naturally choosing to toilet away from resting and eating areas fairly closely at 30% followed by puppies will quickly learn to be clean if you leave the door open and allow them to follow older trained dogs. A minority saying that if you tell a puppy off for making a mess, they'll learn that toileting's wrong, and a few people saying that puppies should be housetrained by 16 weeks of age.

Lovely, brilliant. OK, so, yeah, I would agree with the, majority there. So most puppies will naturally choose the toilet away from where they sleep and where they eat, if they've been able to do that at the breeders as well.

In terms of the other statements, these are all fairly common, things that owners may, may have a belief of, or, or other professionals may believe as well. In terms of house training, I usually set the expectation of 6 months to owners just to give them a bit of a, a reality dose. For some dogs it can take that long if you're not very consistent with their training, but I think a lot of people will get quite frustrated at a.

A 16 week of age mark, if they've had their puppy for 8 weeks and it's not house trained, it can take much longer than that, even with consistent training. So it is a case of being patient and setting expectations as well. And it does depend somewhat on what the breed has already started for you.

So the second statement, if you tell your puppy off for making a mess, they will learn toileting indoors is wrong. This is a bit of a trick statement because what your puppy may learn is that toileting in front of you is wrong. They could learn that toileting indoors.

Is wrong as well. But the most likely association they will make is if they toilet in front of you in the house, that's wrong. And I'll quite often see puppies that will learn to toilet behind the sofa, because they haven't associated making a mess with being in a house, but they've associated making a mess in front of the owner in the house, as, as what gets the punishment.

So, again, the reason that we wouldn't encourage people to tell puppies off for making mistakes, just in case they learn to hide them. And then the last statement there, puppies will quickly learn to be clean if you leave the door open and allow them to follow older trained dogs. Yes, that is absolutely, a possibility, but it's not a definite.

And I have had people again, be quite surprised where that hasn't happened. But also in terms of the leaving the door open trap, a lot of people will do that in summer, even if they haven't got other dogs. And then what happens is the puppy never learns to ask to go to the toilet.

So if the door's not open, they may not choose to go out. And you have to be part of toilet training is to be quite aware of the dog going up to the door and asking to go out, so it can complicate things slightly, and, and make things take a little bit longer. But dogs are quite good observational learners, so if there's other dogs in the house, they do tend to pick up habits from them.

OK, so dogs do develop really strong toileting habits. It's something that we face as an issue in kennels sometimes if a dog's well house trained, they'll just refuse to go to the toilet in their kennel. So those dogs need to be taken outside of the kennel in order to toilet, otherwise they may be holding themselves 9 hours or more.

So they can form really strong toileting habits. We need to help them make the right ones. General rule of thumb is take the puppy to the toilet every time it finishes doing something.

So it's, it's finished sleeping, it's finished exercising, it's finished eating, it's finished having a big drink, it's finished playing, take it out to the toilet, approximately every hour to start with just to give them the opportunity. You wanna watch out for signs such as circling, sniffing the floor, moving to the door, pick up on them and take the puppy out. We want to make sure the puppy is walking outside.

It's not getting carried outside, so that it learns better to go outside cause it's been its own choice. The other important point is when the puppy's outside, the owner needs to be waiting quietly with no distractions. So it's no good to go outside and start playing with a toy.

It needs to be quiet, ignore the puppy until they've gone to the toilet, and then reward them once they've gone in the right place. If they make a mess inside the house, that should be cleaned up using an enzymatic cleaner, and that is because, . Commercial cleaners like disinfectant that you might get for your kitchen, say, contain ammonia and ammonia being a byproduct of urine, it's possible that dogs can kind of pick up on that and say, well, it's still a component of urine, so it still acts as a marker.

Enzymatic cleaners would include the kind of specific urine off cleaners you can get from the pet shops, but also biological washing powder diluted with water at about a 10% solution. OK, so, our third and final kind of troubleshooting area is puppies and children. And again, I think this is something that some people really struggle with, especially in regards to mouthing, and chewing.

So, again, gates are your friends. So gates and pens really just help manage the situation. Puppies and children should be separated when they can't be supervised, or when the puppy's very lively and the children don't feel like playing with it.

Making sure that children's toys are kept out of the puppy's reach, so there's no, no tears over, favourite toys getting shredded, and encouraging them to interact with the dog in the best kind of a way. So what's the right way to play with the dog, what kind of fun games can we teach them, and what can we do to engage with the dog in a positive way. The Dog Smart is a .

Scheme run by Dogs Trust where parent and children workshops are freely available to every school in the UK I think is covered by an education officer. So I would, just signpost you to that part of our website. And if you do have owners that have got concerns with their children around dogs, there's lots of good resources on that website in terms of just giving them advice.

Similarly, if there's children who just really like dogs or are a bit worried about dogs and they want lessons in school, that's something that, that the dogs trusts are able to provide. OK, so in terms of where you can refer people to if they need a bit more specialist help. There, there are dog trainers that are available, and the kind of qualification that we would look for there would be the association of the pet dog trainers.

So we'd recommend that dog trainers have got this qualification which basically says that they adhere to a set of standards which include reward-based dog training, and trainers can help dogs in terms of carrying on with obedience classes, but also with specific training needs like recall, loosely walking. Dogs that are showing kind of emotional behavioural problems, which may include, like I said earlier, those issues that relate to dogs that are quite frustrated or worried, and they're showing problems like aggression or, established fear, should be referred to a qualified behaviourist, and you can find, information about that via the Association for the Study of Animal behaviour. Who run the CCAB accreditation scheme, but also the Association of Pet behaviour counsellors who have got their own accreditation, which is matched up with the CCAB scheme scheme.

And you can get more information about what these standards are and why they're important via the Animal behaviour and Training Council website, and there's a link for that there as well. OK, just another, little dog school plug whilst I'm here. So Dogs Trust also ran a scheme called Dog School.

I worked as head coach for Bristol Dog School for about 6 months before I moved into my current role. There's 26 schools across the UK now, and there's puppy classes, adolescent classes, and adult and rescue classes. They take puppies for about 12 weeks, so it matches up perfectly from when they may be coming on from a puppy party.

Again, it's 6 puppies per class maximum, 2 trainers for those 6 puppies, plus volunteers, so they get really personalised experience. But the main thing that I really liked about running these classes is that there's a big focus on behaviour, so there's a lot about prevention and understanding fear and anxiety and frustration. And how we can prevent problems from starting and how we can support owners on a week by week basis when they do have issues.

Dog School also run veterinary CPD and public seminars in their areas, and you can visit the website for more information. Quite excitingly, we're also developing loads of, leaflets and handouts for owners on training and behaviour needs on that website. So if you need leaflets for things like loosely walking or learning to be alone on noiseheres, you'll find loads of brilliant resources there.

All right, lovely. So just to wrap us off, wrap us up, sorry. In summary, puppy behavioural development starts before birth.

But puppies are particularly sensitive learning up until the age of approximately 14 weeks. Much of that sensitive period is the responsibility of the breeder. Vet practises have the opportunity to develop to develop positive relationships with clients and their pets early on in life.

And there's several options that are available to us in terms of how to put that into practise. The choice that we make has to suit the clinic and the staff working there. Owners will always ask about behaviour, so even if you haven't got an active interest in it, it's something that you'll find yourselves giving advice on.

And the real take home point is really always will rule out medical influence influences for problems, have that basic generic emergency advice ready and also have people that you know you can refer owners on to for more help. Yeah, which is my last point. Lovely, thanks for your participation.

Suzanne, thank you so much for the webinar tonight and you were an absolute star. It was like you were a seasoned professional, not your first one. Well done, that was early on, but that's Storm and it was absolutely brilliant for a really good mark of a webinar and a presenter.

When we run over as we have slightly now and the numbers don't drop, everybody stayed right to the end. Thank you. Thank you for your participation.

I think it's really important that vets and puppy and everything else. And I mean I've been a vet for 32 years now and if I think of what you're telling us tonight compared to what we were taught, 32 years ago, it's, it's chalk and cheese and it's, it's such a fabulous developing field. And the fact that we've got people like yourself, you know, who are trained is, is really remarkable.

And, places like the Dogs Trust to support us and help us. I, I'm a big fan of the Dogs Trust and I think you guys do an amazing amount of work. No, thank you very much.

Yeah, it's amazing how much things change and I say, if I was given this talk 15 years ago, my advice would be very different, but yeah, we're all about kind of keeping on top of research and and moving, moving with things as they progress. Yeah, that's the, the, the beauty of CPD and, and progress as things go on. So we do have a question from Andrew.

Andrew says Adapttyl Junior is a new product that I've seen. Do you see a benefit of using pheromones alongside behavioural advice and socialising? Yeah, I wasn't actually, I, I wasn't aware of Adapptyl Junior coming out, but there is evidence for using pheromones like adaptyl and I think that they absolutely have their place.

The evidence behind them is . Kind of varied. So a lot of the evidence is funded by the people that that make the product, but that's not necessarily to say that it's, it's not strong evidence.

I would say at the moment we haven't got any strong evidence that absolutely says this product will work for any kind of anxiety. But from a personal, view, I do believe that those products are effective with some individuals, and I think that. Varies depending on the individual.

I also think they're really useful for, like, lower level anxieties, so things like settling a puppy in. I do think that they're probably quite, quite useful. And so, yeah, I absolutely think that they have their place.

But if a dog's showing a really established fear or it's showing a behavioural problem, that would always need to be adjunctive to other, other things as well. Excellent. When you were talking about things like mouthing and all that sort of thing, you were talking about moving away from the puppy and that.

Can you comment on the, the behaviour of actually turning your back on the dog and not moving away? Yeah, yeah, that's another, viable option. I think it depends on the level, like the intensity of the behaviour that you're seeing.

So with some puppies, if it's just like a gentle mouthing on your hand, the first thing that I would normally do is take my hand and put it behind my back, but not necessarily get up. And then if a puppy were to continue, I would then like turn my body away like you say. And if it were to then continue even more, I would get up and walk away and if it were to pursue me I'd potentially shut the door so that it couldn't.

So I would kind of escalate my response depending on what the puppy's doing. But if I had a dog, like an adult dog, say for example, my own dog when I first got him, who I knew would escalate quite quickly, I wouldn't probably hang around and go through the go through the motions. But with puppies, I pretty much would always, almost kind of wean the attention off.

Yeah, yeah. Daniella has a question that says, one often hears that you are not supposed to clean up messes in front of the dog. Is this accurate?

I don't think there's any like evidence that would tell us whether it's accurate or not accurate, . I'm not sure what the puppy would learn from it, to be honest. I'm not sure, you know, if you were angry and you were cleaning up, potentially they'd see, see it as a punish, punishment or potentially they would see it as something of interest.

But I personally don't think that the puppy associates the mess on the floor with what it's done. So I don't really think that if a puppy sees you cleaning up its mess, it, it, my view is that it probably isn't going to take a whole lot away from that, so I wouldn't be super concerned about it. Excellent.

Folks, I know we've run over, but it's been a fascinating topic and we've had ourselves a brilliant presenter. Suzanne, thank you for your time tonight and I truly hope that we will be seeing and hearing a lot of you in the future.